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TRANSFORMATIVE
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McKelvey Engineering is home of the NSF CURB Engineering Research Center.
Momentum
FALL
DEAN
SENIOR
Nick Benassi
ENGINEERING NEWS & CONTENT DIRECTOR Beth Miller
DIRECTOR OF MARKETING & COMMUNICATIONS
Virgil Tipton
SENIOR GRAPHIC DESIGNER
Aimee Felter
SCIENCE WRITER
Shawn Ballard
MARKETING & COMMUNICATIONS WRITER
Channing Suhl
MARKETING & MULTIMEDIA MANAGER
Suzanne Bremehr
DIGITAL
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ENGINEERING
Engineering Momentum is published by the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis. Unless otherwise noted, articles may be reprinted without permission with appropriate credit to the publication, school and university.
CORRESPONDENCE
McKelvey School of Engineering Washington University in St. Louis MSC 1163-0206-01 One Brookings Drive St. Louis, MO 63130-4899
EMAIL engineering@wustl.edu PHONE 314-935-6100
engineering.washu.edu
PHOTO BY JERRY NAUNHEIM
I
could not be more proud of our faculty and the continued pursuit of excellence they exhibit. You should be, too.”
Each February, I have the privilege of helping to organize the Engineering Deans Institute Public Policy Colloquium in Washington, D.C. We engage government and agency representatives to learn about — and potentially influence — science and technology policy.
In 2023, the bulk of the discussion was the CHIPS and Science Act and its ramifications for engineering. But I heard a second theme emerging: the recognition of biomanufacturing and biotechnology as a critical component of economic competitiveness for the U.S. Indeed, this observation caused me to organize a session on that topic for the 2024 meeting. In the interim, a report came out of the White House detailing several key manufacturing and production challenges in this space. The rationale was both creating more sustainable processes for producing materials and ensuring a robust supply chain for manufacturing. There was also a sense of wanting to ensure that this technology would remain a competitive advantage for the U.S. It was clear that this was an important direction for the country and for federal funding.
This past year has seen McKelvey Engineering capitalize on this opportunity multiple times. In the previous issue of Momentum, we described a variety of efforts to replace petroleum-based production of plastics and thereby reduce their potential biological harm. In this issue, the cover story describes a new — and much larger — National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded
research center focused on producing chemicals, biofuels and biomaterials. It is part of the circular economy effort that obviates the need to pull more carbon atoms out of the ground to produce so much of what we use every day. Applications range from agriculture to manufacturing.
Let me point out that this is not just another grant. Every two years, the NSF typically grants funding for four Engineering Research Centers (ERCs). These awards represent a major investment to advance specific aspects of science and technology that the agency believes have the potential for significant impact on our country and the world. Each ERC is comprised of a team of universities and industry partners led by a school that has demonstrated both scientific and academic leadership in the proposed domain. This year, the NSF funded the Carbon Utilization Redesign for Biomanufacturing-Empowered Decarbonization (CURB) Engineering Research Center, led by faculty from the Department of Energy, Environmental & Chemical Engineering at McKelvey Engineering. As Chancellor Martin said in a presentation to university leaders, this is a “big deal.” I could not be more proud of our faculty and the continued pursuit of excellence they exhibit. You should be, too.
Aaron F. Bobick Dean & James M. McKelvey Professor
The Carbon Utilization Redesign for Biomanufacturing-Empowered Decarbonization (CURB) Engineering Research Center is a global research and innovation ecosystem that will transform U.S. manufacturing by capturing carbon dioxide emissions to create new chemicals, fuels and materials and drive a circular carbon economy.
Class of 2028
312 STUDENTS
41% identify as female 29% underrepresented students of color 28% low income 27% first-generation college students
new dual degree students pursuing either 3/2 or 3/3 options
$70 million
IN RESEARCH AWARDS IN FISCAL YEAR 2024, UP FROM $52 MILLION IN (FY)2023.
McKelvey Engineering student representative to the Board of Trustees
Congratulations to Jean Brownell, a doctoral student in Energy, Environmental & Chemical Engineering (EECE), who was named a student representative to the Board of Trustees! Brownell studies herbicides as emerging environmental contaminants in Kimberly Parker’s Lab.
We're honored
Engineering Momentum magazine won the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) 2024 Best of District VI Award in the category of Magazines – Alumni/ General Interest: Any Institution Type (Targeted Audience) for its Winter and Fall 2023 issues. Entries are judged for overall concept and creativity; content, writing and editing; design and layout; audience engagement; use of resources (budget, people and time) and return on investment. District VI includes educational institutions in Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming.
Engineering the Future
Engineering the Future, a podcast from the WashU McKelvey School of Engineering, returned this fall with a new season highlighting women in engineering. Guests from across McKelvey Engineering join Science Writer Shawn Ballard to discuss research, teaching, outreach and more. Listen to Season 1 on all major podcast platforms. #WeAreMcKelvey
LISTEN: Check out the new season featuring women in engineering.
Engineering students reflect on servicelearning trip to Hong Kong & China
In May, eight students from the McKelvey School of Engineering traveled to Hong Kong and China as part of a service-learning experience through the Department of Biomedical Engineering. Along with students from the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, they got hands-on experience creating custom-fitted devices for patients at a rehabilitation clinic.
The Service-Learning Experience in Guangdong & Hong Kong (SLEIGH) allowed McKelvey students to use their biomedical engineering skills to fill a crucial need in the communities they visited: spinal braces for low-income and rural patients with adolescent idiopathic scoliosis (AIS). Outside of the clinic, they enjoyed the opportunity to immerse themselves in local culture and visit landmarks.
Senior Kaitlyn Sallee praised the way the project “incorporated project management, CAD, craftsmanship, on-the-spot problem-solving, emotional intelligence and interprofessional collaboration, all relevant skills in engineering career fields.” Her classmate, senior Jenna Nguyen, reflected on her experience, saying, “SLEIGH was an unforgettable hands-on experience. This trip piqued my interest in prosthetics and orthotics and has furthered my commitment to helping low-income families with biomedical technology.”
McKelvey Engineering introduces EDI grants initiative
To empower students, faculty and staff to make transformative changes in the ways we learn and work, McKelvey School of Engineering made Equity, Diversity & Inclusion (EDI) grants available to students, faculty and staff this fall. Led by the school’s EDI Committee, the initiative provides financial support up to $25,000 for projects and activities that address EDI challenges at Washington University.
The introduction of EDI grants marks a step forward in the school’s commitment to create a more diverse, equitable and inclusive community as outlined in the McKelvey Engineering EDI action plan, said Marcus Foston, associate professor of energy, environmental & chemical engineering and director of diversity initiatives.
By investing in ideas brought forward by those who care about this community the most, we broaden our reach and at the same time target those areas where there is a need for improvement, accelerating our efforts to move toward a place of belonging for all.”
— MARCUS FOSTON
National Society of Black Engineers wins Program with Purpose Award
Shaping the engineers of tomorrow while advancing social change is a guiding principle of the Washington University in St. Louis chapter of the National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE).
The group was honored at the Excellence in Leadership Awards ceremony, which celebrates the outstanding achievements of WashU students and their co-curricular experience.
L eah Rae Czerniewski, biomedical engineering doctoral student, 34
“Leah was an extraordinary student and neuroscientist. Despite her illness, she pursued science with a quiet determination that was an inspiration to those around her. Most importantly, she was a beautiful human being: kind-hearted, generous, and a wonderful mentor to many. She touched so many lives. She will be missed.”
— JIN-MOO LEE, MD
Leah Rae Vandiver Czerniewski, a doctoral student in the Department of Biomedical Engineering in the McKelvey School of Engineering, died of a long illness Tuesday, June 11, 2024, at Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis. She was 34.
Czerniewski worked in the lab of Jin-Moo Lee, MD, the Andrew B. & Gretchen P. Jones Professor in Neurology; chair of the Department of Neurology at the School of Medicine and neurologist-in-chief at Barnes-Jewish Hospital, where she studied the cellular basis of Alzheimer’s disease and neurodegeneration. She was an expert in super-resolution light microscopy, fluorescence and cell culture, and was a co-author on five peer-reviewed journal articles.
Czerniewski earned a bachelor’s degree in biomedical engineering from Saint Louis University and was preparing to submit and defend her dissertation at the time of her death. She is survived by her husband, Aaron Czerniewski; a daughter, Lucy; her parents, siblings, grandparents, in-laws, and extended family and friends.
Representing the McKelvey School of Engineering, NSBE was nominated for the award by its adviser, LaVeasey Carter, assistant dean of undergraduate student services.
“This honor shows that they can have an impact beyond the classroom and on campus,” Carter said. “The organization is showing other students what McKelvey Engineering is about, what you can do with it and where you can take it.”
The award, presented by Campus Life, is significant for NSBE president Donovan Dixson, who earned a bachelor’s in chemical engineering with a minor in energy engineering from the McKelvey School of Engineering in May 2024.
“As an engineering support group, we understand that our needs and support systems differ from those of other organizations on campus,” Dixson said. “This award serves as a platform for student groups like NSBE to receive the recognition we deserve, as we navigate not only the engineering space but also cultivate an affinity space that offers our members academic, social, service and professional opportunities.”
Women’s Society honors students with awards, scholarships
The Women’s Society of Washington University presented the Harriet K. Switzer Leadership Award to exceptional students at its annual membership meeting, held April 12.
The Switzer Leadership Award, named in honor of Harriet K. Switzer for her contribution to the Women’s Society and her commitment to leadership development, is given to students who show a commitment to the university and leadership at the undergraduate level. This year’s recipients were Maeve Lomax, Shelei Pan and Haleigh Pine, who all recently earned bachelor’s degrees.
Lomax majored in mechanical engineering at the McKelvey School of Engineering. She was the president of WashU Rocketry, vice president of Kappa Delta sorority and secretary of Pi Tau Sigma. She is a manufacturing test engineer at Lockheed Martin in Fort Worth, Texas.
Pine, a biomedical engineering major at the McKelvey School of Engineering, was actively involved with Lay First Responders International, a nonprofit organization founded by WashU students that trains community members from resource-limited settings in basic emergency care. She plans to attend medical school.
Pan majored in the neuroscience track of biology in Arts & Sciences. She plans to pursue an MD/PhD at the School of Medicine and to become a neurosurgeon-scientist.
Guinter Dame Vogg
As a researcher at WashU’s Atmospheric Composition Analysis Group, Guinter Dame Vogg analyzed air filters from around the globe for the microscopic particles that cause millions of premature deaths every year. While at WashU, he also spent time working for the Environmental Law Clinic and WashU Sustainability Exchange and traveled to Singapore for McKelvey Engineering’s “International Experience” course.
“It’s just very rare for a college to offer all of these different opportunities,” he said. “But I want to expose myself to as much as possible. I have a goal — not to be the engineer who knows every detail or a policymaker or a businessman, but to be someone with the skills who can solve this crisis.”
After graduating in May 2024 with a bachelor’s in chemical engineering, Dame Vogg moved to Berkeley, Calif., to work at Aircapture, a direct air-capture company.
Ping-I (Dennis) Chou
Ping-I (Dennis) Chou studied water chemistry and plastics in the environment during his time at WashU, inspired in part by concerns about the ubiquity of discarded face masks during the COVID pandemic. Chou was in a unique position to address the issue, having been selected as a McDonnell International Scholars Academy fellow and working as a doctoral student researcher in Young-Shin Jun’s environmental nanochemistry laboratory in the McKelvey School of Engineering.
After earning a doctorate in energy, environmental & chemical engineering in May 2024, Chou moved to Oregon to join Intel, one of the world’s largest semiconductor manufacturers, as a module development engineer, where he continues to use his nanochemistry and photochemistry expertise in semiconductor design and manufacturing.
(From left) Shelei Pan, Kathy Fulstone, Haleigh Pine, Angie Bernardi. (Not pictured: Maeve Lomax)
Energy, Environmental & Chemical Engineering group sees St. Louis through new eyes
Twenty-three years after 10-year-old Rodney McAllister was killed by a pack of stray dogs in Ivory Perry Park — just two miles from Washington University in St. Louis — a group of faculty, staff and students from the McKelvey School of Engineering learned more about the tragedy when they visited the park as part of a tour of north St. Louis.
Janie Brennan, senior lecturer in the Department of Energy, Environmental & Chemical Engineering, organized the bus tour with Bob Hansman, senior lecturer in the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts, on behalf of the department’s equity, diversity & inclusion committee. “This was life-changing for me,” Brennan said of visiting the neglected area. “I wish everyone could do it. I see the world a little differently now than I did before.”
Christina Alexakos, a senior majoring in chemical engineering, said seeing the blighted conditions was meaningful to her as an engineering student.
“It was a reminder of why engineers exist, which is to help people and to make life better for people,” she said. “We should not innovate for the sake of making something new. We should innovate with purpose.”
McKelvey Believes easing the transition for first-generation students
First-generation McKelvey Engineering students navigating the transition to college are finding additional support from a familiar source — each other — through McKelvey Believes. The program connects upperclass students with incoming firstyear students to help improve student outcomes through mentorship, guidance and academic support.
The program is designed to foster the organic development of peer relationships. Mentors volunteer to host or co-host monthly “hangouts” where they do a presentation or activity based on helpful topics such as financial awareness, goal setting and first failure. Mentees engage with the mentors of their choice and attend hangouts that interest them.
In addition to hangouts, the program provides students with priority tutoring in Calculus 1 and 2 and facilitates initiatives and workshops on topics such as wealth gap awareness.
Wobbly molecules get a closer look
Researchers need advanced techniques and careful calculations to measure the movement of molecules accurately.
Matthew Lew, associate professor in the Preston M. Green Department of Electrical & Systems Engineering in the McKelvey School of Engineering, builds new imaging technologies to unravel the intricate workings of life at the nanoscale. Though they’re incredibly tiny – 1,000 to 100,000 times smaller than a human hair – nanoscale biomolecules like proteins and DNA strands are fundamental to virtually all biological processes.
In a cover article published in the Journal of Physical Chemistry A , Weiyan Zhou, a doctoral student in electrical engineering, and Lew introduced a detailed model that allows scientists to describe and measure more accurately how molecules move. Where traditional measurement techniques assume that molecules wobble uniformly in all directions within a circular cone — an isotropic diffusion model – Lew and Zhou discarded this simplification to reflect the true nature of molecular behavior in more complex biological environments.
Sustainable technology to extract critical materials from coal-based resources
Rare earth elements (REEs), including lanthanides, scandium and yttrium, are essential in modern technologies. Though REEs aren’t especially scarce in Earth’s crust, they are widely dispersed and typically found in low concentrations in natural ores, spurring interest in developing efficient and sustainable methods for their extraction and recovery.
Young-Shin Jun, professor of energy, environmental & chemical engineering in the McKelvey School of Engineering, received a one-year, $500,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and $25,000 from WashU’s Consortium for Clean Coal Utilization. Jun plans to develop novel technology to extract, recover and enrich REEs effectively from solid coal-based materials in an environmentally friendly way.
Can weak human supervision train superhuman models?
Chien-Ju Ho, assistant professor of computer science & engineering, received a $133,000 award from OpenAI to explore how and when weak human supervision might be used to improve strong machine learning models.
Weak human supervision refers to data or demonstrations provided by humans who may not be as knowledgeable and might perform suboptimally. While this type of supervision is more prone to errors, it might also offer more diverse data coverage. This can be beneficial for improving the generalizability of machine learning models.
Matthew Lew developed a model that allows scientists to more accurately describe and measure how molecules move.
Fluctuating cellular energy drives microbial bioproduction
Fuzhong Zhang, the Francis Ahmann Professor in the McKelvey School of Engineering and co-director of the Synthetic Biology Manufacturing of Advanced Materials Research Center (SMARC), led research to understand ATP dynamics in various fermentation conditions and developed a cost-effective approach to enhance bioproduction through supplementation of ATP-promoting carbon sources. The results were published in Nature Communications.
This work used a genetically encoded ATP biosensor to explore the rapid changes of ATP concentration in various microbial cells and fermentation conditions. They found that feeding microbes with different carbon sources results in very different ATP dynamics. Among the tested carbons commonly used for fermentation, acetate induced the highest ATP levels in E. coli while Pseudomonas putida, a microbial strain widely used by the fermentation industry, prefers a fatty acid called oleate.
WashU scientists uncover hidden source of snow melt: dark brown carbon
Wildfires leave potent climate heaters behind in their wake, particles that enhance the absorption of sunlight and warm the atmosphere. Dropped on snow like a wool poncho, these aerosols darken and decrease the surface reflectance of snowy places. But it was not yet understood just how different types of smoke particles contribute to these effects. In a study recently published in npj Climate and Atmospheric Science, researchers at WashU model how dark brown carbon (d-BrC) — light absorbing, water insoluble organic carbon — is 1.6 times as potent a warmer compared to what researchers previously thought was the main culprit: black carbon. Doctoral student Ganesh Chelluboyina, a McDonnell International Scholars Academy fellow, and Taveen Kapoor, a postdoctoral fellow, have spent the bulk of their time at WashU taking up that challenge in the lab of Rajan Chakrabarty, professor of energy, environmental & chemical engineering.
Humans change their own behavior when training AI
A new cross-disciplinary study by WashU researchers has uncovered an unexpected psychological phenomenon at the intersection of human behavior and artificial intelligence: When told they were training AI to play a bargaining game, participants actively adjusted their own behavior to appear more fair and just, an impulse with potentially important implications for real-world AI developers.
The study, published in PNAS, was supported by a seed grant from the Transdisciplinary Institute in Applied Data Sciences (TRIADS). Lead author is Lauren Treiman, a doctoral student in the Division of Computational & Data Sciences (DCDS). The co-authors are Wouter Kool, assistant professor of psychological and brain sciences in Arts & Sciences, and Chien-Ju Ho, assistant professor of computer science & engineering in the McKelvey School of Engineering.
Researchers investigate how serotonin alters locusts' sense of smell
Researchers at WashU have spent the better part of the decade studying the ins and outs of how locusts smell, including how odors affect the insect’s behavior.
In research published in eLife, Barani Raman, a professor of biomedical engineering in the McKelvey School of Engineering, starts to map out just how olfactory circuits are altered in driving different behavior in locusts. Neuromodulator serotonin is a key factor in that behavior including how locusts can go from being a “loner” to “gregarious” — otherwise known as the swarming phase.
Raman and doctoral student Yelyzaveta Bessonova wanted to investigate how serotonin affects the part of the neural circuit in the locust brain that senses olfactory cues and drives appropriate behavioral responses. The more researchers understand how sensory signals are processed, the easier it will be to control and prevent locusts from swarming. From an engineering point of view, understanding this biological system can inspire solutions for odor detection in dangerous and toxic environments.
DEMIST artificial intelligence tool may enhance usability of medical images
In a study published in IEEE Transactions on Radiation and Plasma Medical Sciences, Abhinav Jha, associate professor of biomedical engineering in the McKelvey School of Engineering and of radiology at Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology at the School of Medicine, and his collaborators developed a tool that demonstrates potential to improve performance on clinical tasks. The tool has been developed in the context of denoising myocardial perfusion imaging (MPI) single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) images.
Inspired by our understanding of how the human visual system works, Jha’s team developed a detectiontask-specific deep-learning-based approach for denoising these low-count MPI SPECT images such that the quality improves. The new tool, called DEMIST, leverages a deep learning framework to selectively clean MPI SPECT images while preserving features that influence detection tasks.
‘Molecular putty’ properties found encoded in protein sequence for biomolecular condensates
Biomolecular condensates are membraneless hubs of condensed proteins and nucleic acids within cells, which researchers are realizing are tied to an increasing number of cellular processes and diseases. Studies of biomolecular condensate formation have uncovered layers of complexity, including their ability to behave like a viscoelastic material. However, the molecular basis for this putty-like property was unknown.
Through a multi-institution collaboration, researchers at WashU, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and State University of New York at Buffalo examined the interaction networks within condensates to better define the rules associated with their unique material properties. Published in Nature Physics, the results quantify the timescales associated with these interactions, explaining why condensates act like a molecular putty and how they can “age” into a viscoelastic solid more akin to a rubber ball. — St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital
Jung-Tsung Shen uses a two-color photonic dimer laser technology that uses quantum effects to bind two photons together.
Quantum physics may help lasers see through fog, aid in communications
Jung-Tsung Shen, associate professor in the Preston M. Green Department of Electrical & Systems Engineering, is developing a prototype of a quantum photonic-dimer laser with a two-year, $1 million grant from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) of the U.S. Department of Defense. With the funding, Shen will implement his lab’s two-color photonic dimer laser technology, in which carefully controlled pairs of light particles, or photonic dimers, are used to generate a powerful and concentrated beam of light, or laser. Quantum photonic-dimer lasers take advantage of quantum effects to bind two photons together, increasing their energy and efficiency.
Photons, or particles that represent a quantum of light, travel very quickly and don't carry a charge, so it is difficult to get them to interact with each other and to manipulate them. Shen’s lab found that when he “glued” two photons of different colors together to form a photonic dimer using the power of quantum mechanics, they took on the behavior of a blue photon. The entanglement between the two photons within the dimer may offer unprecedented capabilities for applications in communication and imaging, Shen said.
Heart disease model puts cells to work
Using animals to study heart disease doesn’t always translate well to human health outcomes, and human heart cells available for research don’t work outside the human body.
Nathaniel Huebsch, an assistant professor of biomedical engineering in the McKelvey School of Engineering, is studying cells with a mutation that causes hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM), a disease that can set off heart failure with little warning.
Huebsch and colleagues get around this challenge by tricking stem cells into behaving like mature heart cells, inducing pluripotent stem cell (iPSC)-derived cardiomyocytes to behave as if they are grownup heart cells bearing the mutation that causes HCM. They detail their findings in a paper published in iScience
A method developed by Ulugbek Kamilov's lab enables researchers to adapt deep learning models using a small set of training data.
Deep learning models can be trained with limited data
Deep learning models, such as those used in medical imaging to help detect disease or abnormalities, must be trained with a lot of data. However, often there isn’t enough data available to train these models, or the data is too diverse.
Ulugbek Kamilov, associate professor of computer science & engineering and of electrical & systems engineering in the McKelvey School of Engineering, along with Shirin Shoushtari, Jiaming Liu and Edward Chandler, doctoral students in his group, have developed a method to get around this common problem in image reconstruction.
“Our method enables us to adapt deep learning models using a small set of training data, no matter what hospital, what machine or what body parts the images come from. What is significant about the domain adaptation strategy is that we can reduce the errors we face in imaging due to a limited set of data,” Shoushtari said. "This could help us apply deep learning to problems that were previously deemed impossible due to the data requirements.”
Scientists find new way global air churn makes particles
Researchers at WashU have discovered something new in the sky, a mechanism that produces a large portion of particles in Earth’s atmosphere.
The research, published in Science, was led by Jian Wang, professor and director of the Center for Aerosol Science and Engineering. The research team includes Lu Xu, assistant professor in the Department of Energy, Environmental & Chemical Engineering at the McKelvey School of Engineering, and scientists from NASA, NOAA, NCAR and European universities.
Using the data collected from NASA’s global-scale aircraft measurements, the team found that most of the new particles are not formed in the outflow regions as previously thought. While puzzling over this surprising observation, Wang and colleagues discovered a whole different mechanism taking place when the mixing of stratospheric and tropospheric air results in conditions that are ripe for particle formation.
Artificial intelligence meets cartography
Beyond daily activities, maps are also increasingly being combined with artificial intelligence to create powerful tools for urban modeling, navigation systems, natural hazard forecasting and response, climate change monitoring, virtual habitat modeling, and other kinds of surveillance.
McKelvey Engineering graduate students Aayush Dhakal and Srikumar Sastry are working with Nathan Jacobs, professor of computer science & engineering, to develop models that use satellite imagery to support these endeavors. Dhakal’s project, Sat2Cap, allows users to create maps from free-form textual descriptions. Sastry developed GeoSynth, a model for synthesizing satellite images based on a given textual prompt or geographic location.
Researchers take cue from vibes of elephants, spiders
Organisms of all shapes and sizes communicate by vibrating the solid stuff of their environments, and initial evidence suggests that individual cells in our bodies might do the same.
A team of researchers from Israel, the United Kingdom, Spain and the United States have been awarded a three-year, $1.5 million grant from the Human Frontier Science Program to study this potentially transformative new mode of cell-tocell communication. The project brings together experts in cell mechanobiology, vibrational communication and computational modeling to explore whether cells can transmit information to each other through tiny vibrations in the scaffold of proteins surrounding them.
The research team is led by Ayelet Lesman, professor in the School of Mechanical Engineering at Tel Aviv University in Israel. Co-investigators include Guy Genin, the Harold and Kathleen Faught Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the McKelvey School of Engineering; Beth Mortimer, associate professor in animal biology at the University of Oxford; and Ramon Zaera, professor from the Continuum Mechanics and Structural Analysis Department at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid.
New technology allows researchers to precisely, flexibly modulate brain
Human brain diseases, such as Parkinson’s disease, involve damage in more than one region of the brain, requiring technology that could precisely and flexibly address all affected regions simultaneously. Researchers at WashU have developed a noninvasive technology combining a holographic acoustic device with genetic engineering that allows them to precisely target affected neurons in the brain, creating the potential to precisely modulate selected cell types in multiple diseased brain regions.
Hong Chen, associate professor of biomedical engineering in the McKelvey School of Engineering and of neurosurgery in the School of Medicine, and her team created AhSonogenetics, or Airy-beam holographic sonogenetics, a technique that uses a noninvasive wearable ultrasound device to alter genetically selected neurons in the brains of mice. Results of the proofof-concept study were published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
‘Transformative research’
by Beth Miller
WashU leads $26 million decarbonization initiative.
The Hybrid Electro-Bio CO 2 Utilization System (shown here) uses electrocatalysis to turn waste carbon dioxide into intermediate substances that can be transformed into environmentally responsible materials.
ILLUSTRATIONS BY DAVID RYGIOL | PHOTOS BY DOUGLAS GARFIELD
To minimize the impact of human-made climate change, it is essential to significantly and rapidly decrease carbon dioxide emissions while simultaneously meeting the energy and manufacturing needs of a healthy and economically stable society.
A powerhouse collaboration of universities and industry, led by the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis, is embarking on a bold plan to transform manufacturing toward zero or negative emissions by converting carbon dioxide ultimately into environmentally friendly chemicals and products that create a circular economy.
The Carbon Utilization Redesign for Biomanufacturing-Empowered Decarbonization (CURB) Engineering Research Center (ERC) is funded by a five-year, $26 million grant from the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF). The award — one of only four the NSF awarded nationwide in 2024 — supports convergent projects that include research, education, commercialization, workforce development, and diversity and inclusion that will lead to societal change. The grant includes the potential for a five-year, $26 million renewal.
“The vision of CURB is as a vibrant global research and innovation ecosystem that transforms U.S. manufacturing by capturing and leveraging carbon dioxide emissions and thereby decreasing the human ecological footprint,” said Aaron F. Bobick, dean and the James M. McKelvey Professor in McKelvey Engineering. “For McKelvey Engineering to lead this research project represents the increased sophistication of the school’s research and its ability to support an activity of this scale and in alignment with our strategic priorities.”
McKelvey Engineering brings its broad, unique experience with the nation’s first Department of Energy, Environmental & Chemical Engineering to lead the ambitious project in collaboration with prominent researchers at the University of Delaware, Prairie View A&M University and Texas A&M University.
This endeavor represents a significant investment in research and innovation, showcasing the advanced capabilities of our institution and aligning with our core mission.” “
— CHANCELLOR
ANDREW D. MARTIN
The Carbon Utilization Redesign for Biomanufacturing-Empowered Decarbonization (CURB) Engineering Research Center (ERC) is a global research and innovation ecosystem that will transform U.S. manufacturing by capturing carbon dioxide emissions to create new chemicals, fuels and materials and drive a circular carbon economy.
WATCH: See how WashU's CURB ERC is reducing the carbon footprint.
This is not just another grant — this center has the opportunity to transform the U.S. economy.” “
— JOSHUA YUAN
“This is not just another grant — this center has the opportunity to transform the U.S. economy,” said Joshua Yuan, chair of the Department of Energy, Environmental & Chemical Engineering in McKelvey Engineering, the Lucy & Stanley Lopata Professor and director of CURB. “Because of low photosynthesis efficiency, there is no way that the current bioprocesses can replace all petrochemical products using limited land and natural resources. CURB will create highly efficient chem-bio hybrid systems to convert renewable energy and carbon dioxide into chemicals, fuels and materials. This will decarbonize U.S. manufacturing and replace a substantial amount of petrochemical products. CURB will drive a new circular carbon economy to fulfill the needs of human society while mitigating carbon emission. That is what is at stake with this center.”
The work aligns with the White House’s March 2023 “Bold Goals for U.S. Biotechnology and Biomanufacturing: Harnessing Research and Development to Further Societal Goals,” based on the White House's 2022 Executive Order to advance biotechnology and biomanufacturing for a sustainable, safe and secure American bioeconomy. The vision to reach this goal is to create a research agenda that outlines the foundational needs that will lead to new solutions in health, climate change, energy, food security, agriculture, supply chain resilience, and national and economic security. The order also launched a National Biotechnology and Biomanufacturing Initiative to ensure that the nation has the capacity to both invent and manufacture the biobased products in the United States to create new jobs, build stronger supply chains and contribute to the country’s climate goals.
According to the World Economic Forum, we are using about 1.6 “earths,” or 60% more of the earth’s resources, than it can regenerate every year. By 2050, with an increased global population and a resulting rise in
consumption, that could get to three to four earths, which is unsustainable. This is why the CURB ERC is so important at this time, Yuan said.
“In addition, the recent National Academies of Science and Engineering report on carbon utilization has highlighted the importance of creating new engineering systems using biocompatible intermediates,” Yuan said. “CURB is exactly advancing this new frontier to enable the economics, scale and emission impacts to achieve the broad implementation and consequent societal impacts.”
Yuan leads the center with co-principal investigators Feng Jiao, professor of energy, environmental & chemical engineering, and Marcus Foston, associate professor of energy, environmental & chemical engineering, both at WashU; Susie Dai, a MizzouForward Professor of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering at the University of Missouri; and Irvin W. Osborne-Lee, professor of chemical engineering at Prairie View A&M. They are joined by 12 faculty members from McKelvey Engineering, as well as 30 faculty members at seven universities; more than 30 corporate, innovation and education partners; and extensive administrative support. Twenty-one companies have committed as member organizations for the project. Among them are Brewer Science Inc.; JERA Americas Inc.; MilliporeSigma; Nestle Purina; Peabody; Skytree; Spire; and Southwest Airlines.
Among CURB’s strategic goals include advancing scientific discoveries to create new hybrid engineering systems; creating pilot-scale testbed facilities; demonstrating the economics and publishing the research results; filing for patents; developing new educational programs for middle and high school students, and undergraduate and graduate students, among others. By the end of the first five years, they expect to have expanded the member network, hosted multiple showcase events, created more than 20 internships with industry partners
and launched startup companies based on the research to transform U.S. manufacturing.
“I’m thrilled that the McKelvey School of Engineering was chosen to lead this ambitious decarbonization initiative,” said Chancellor Andrew D. Martin.
“This endeavor represents a significant investment in research and innovation, showcasing the advanced capabilities of our institution and aligning with our core mission. We look forward to collaborating with our partners to generate new opportunities and make a lasting positive impact.”
“This funding, and the work that will result, demonstrate WashU's strategic vision in which societal challenges are solved through the strengths of our region and our university,” said Beverly Wendland, WashU provost and executive vice chancellor for academic affairs. “Collaboration that convenes disciplines, universities and industries will bring about world-class research that leads to real-world solutions, and I am incredibly proud our McKelvey colleagues are leading this effort. This is a powerful signal for the future of research on our Danforth Campus and the impact WashU and St. Louis can make together.”
The research
CURB will use a Hybrid Electro-Bio CO2 Utilization System (HEBCUS) that uses electrocatalysis to turn waste carbon dioxide into intermediate substances, such as ethanol, acetate and propionate. These intermediates will be compatible with biomanufacturing systems that can more efficiently convert them into a range of products, such as platform chemicals, biofertilizers and other environmentally responsible materials.
“HEBCUS represents a new approach to integrate CO2 electrocatalytic conversion into biomanufacturing, which enables us a sustainable biomanufacturing pathway using CO2 as the raw material to produce chemicals, biofuels and biomaterials,” Jiao said. “This innovative system combines advantages in both electrocatalysis and bioprocess to improve the system efficiency and capability.”
The team will design and optimize two types of HEBCUS: one that uses microbial cells to convert carbon dioxide and one that uses enzymes. The system will be 10 times more efficient than natural processes, such as photosynthesis, and requires fewer steps. CURB will
left) Jia Yu, a postdoctoral research associate; Wentao Dai, a doctoral student; Feng Jiao and Junnan Li, a postdoctoral research associate, discuss the small electrocatalysis reactor.
(From
HEBCUS represents a new approach to integrate CO2 electrocatalytic conversion into biomanufacturing, which enables us a sustainable biomanufacturing pathway using CO2 as the raw material to produce chemicals, biofuels and biomaterials.”
— FENG JIAO
drive new research areas that connect with HEBCUS systems, including integrating renewable energy sources, energy storage applications and biomanufacturing of diverse products.
“Soluble multi-carbon intermediates produced with HEBCUS present a unique advantage over methanol, formate, hydrogen and carbon monoxide-based platforms, enabling substantially improved mass, energy and electron transfers that overcome the gas-to-liquid transfer challenges of hydrogen and carbon monoxide, compatibility with many microbes for efficient conversion into a broad range of products with fewer steps, and the design of multi-enzyme cell-free systems for chemical and polymer synthesis with fewer steps,” Jiao said.
Researchers will then take the new materials and test them for life cycle emissions, supply chain design, market for new products, and environmental justice impact, among other things to identify potential barriers to commercialization and ways to improve the societal, environmental, economic and ecological impacts.
“The goal is to make this process so effective that it is as cost effective to make your materials out of the carbon dioxide you pull out of the air as it would be to pull oil out of the ground,
because then it’s economically viable,” Bobick said. “Nothing will change until we achieve that, because there is unlikely to be a policy approach that provides a sustainable way out of global warming or climate change. You have to make it economically viable.”
Workforce development
The new technology designed and implemented through CURB is expected to generate new jobs which will create new opportunities for people in the community. In addition to jobs, CURB will create new career and training pathways for upskilling, a workforce transition into sectors that are difficult to decarbonize, such as chemical production, through biomanufacturing. This transition aims to enhance U.S. workers’ ability to support themselves and their families while contributing to sustainability of U.S. manufacturing.
“As part of this ERC, we are focused on the workforce development that goes along with a new industry that relies on a new pathway for carbon,” Foston said. “The United States has a strong foundation in biomanufacturing for pharmaceuticals and vaccines. CURB seeks to broaden this expertise to encompass chemicals and materials, thereby driving a comprehensive shift towards biomanufacturing.”
(From left) Morgan Li, Marcus Foston, Jerry Wang, Fuzhong Zhang and Juya Jeon discuss synthetic biology.
WASHU PHOTO
This initiative begins with education and outreach, establishing a pipeline as early as K-12 schools to cultivate the next generation of engineers and skilled workers in these emerging fields.”
“Building an inclusive innovation system that brings technologies to market that solve broad societal challenges through the bioeconomy is core to the mission of BioSTL,” said Justin Raymundo, vice president of innovation ecosystembuilding for BioSTL, the backbone organization for the bioscience innovation ecosystem in St. Louis and CURB innovation partner. “These types of efforts, such as CURB, are exactly what we want to see. It represents continued investment in St. Louis and our innovation economy. We’re excited to contribute significantly to CURB’s leadership in U.S. manufacturing every step of the way and collaborate across community engagement, workforce development, and innovation ecosystem efforts — from idea to growth stage — to create opportunities, jobs and have a huge societal impact into the circular economy.”
NSF Engineering Research Center (ERC)
Preparing the proposal took nearly two years, said Nicole Moore, senior director of research development at WashU, who led the project with a hefty assist from Natalie Goodwin-Frank, director of research development & administration in McKelvey Engineering. Moore’s team also coordinated a site visit by the NSF team and reviewers in fall 2023.
Since the program began in 1985, NSF has funded 75 ERCs throughout the United States. With up to 10 years of support for each center, this investment has led to more than 240 spinoff companies; more than 900 patents; more than 14,400 total bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees to ERC students; and numerous research outcomes enabling new technologies. M
(From left) Kainan Chen, a postdoctoral research associate, and Wei Wei, a doctoral student, work with Joshua Yuan, department chair and Lucy & Stanley Lopata Professor, on several projects in synthetic biology.
From amateur photography to professional imaging technology, Chao Zhou has developed the picture-perfect career.
A true visionary
by
Blaire Leible Garwitz
Chao Zhou's Z-Lab for Biophotonics develops novel optical imaging technologies for biomedical applications including cancer research and tissue engineering.
With a love of capturing images of the world around him, Chao Zhou joined a photography club when he was an undergraduate student studying physics at Peking University in China.
“I enjoyed taking pictures and sharing them with others,” says Zhou, now professor of biomedical engineering at the McKelvey School of Engineering.
“When I moved to the University of Pennsylvania to work on my doctorate, it felt natural to focus on something related to images.”
Zhou’s PhD project involved the use of diffuse optical imaging to look at the effects a traumatic brain injury had on cerebral blood flow and oxygenation, providing critical information for clinical intervention.
“It was eye-opening,” he says. “My career in imaging technology started as a hobby, and then I realized it’s also useful for medicine and research. I’m able to contribute to the advancement of the technology and try to make it even better.”
PHOTOS BY DOUGLAS GARFIELD
Jiawei Meng, research project manager, and Chao Zhou work on developing chips.
Seeing the light
“
With this technology, we don’t have to worry about people moving their head or blinking. Moreover, the current clinical OCT system is bulky and costly, so only major hospitals and clinics can afford it. We want to change that.”
— CHAO ZHOU
After earning a doctorate, Zhou headed to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for postdoctoral training and learned about a new type of imaging technology – optical coherence tomography (OCT), a noninvasive imaging technique that uses light to create cross-sectional high-resolution images of tissue. OCT is primarily used in ophthalmology to diagnose and monitor eye diseases and has been very successful at preventing vision loss in patients. Zhou continued working with OCT as he began his academic career at Lehigh University, where he was a founding member of the Department of Bioengineering.
“OCT is an exciting field, and we continue to improve the technology and add more functionality,” he says.
Early OCT devices, developed in the 1990s, were difficult to use and took several minutes to take just one picture. But in the early 2000s, a breakthrough in technology greatly improved their speed, and devices could then take one picture in as quickly as a fraction of a second.
“This allowed a wider adoption of the technology because high-quality images obtained from the patients led to a more accurate diagnosis,” Zhou says.
Getting the full picture
While technology had increased the speed of OCT, it hadn’t yet fully met clinical needs. Initially, OCT could only take a few cross sections of the retina. When patients returned for follow-up imaging, it was difficult to align the new images with those from their first visit – making it hard to accurately track disease progression. This led to a new technology that could scan the entire eye to get volumetric data.
“With a high-density cube scan, you can look at the same position every time a patient comes back for imaging,” Zhou says. “It was much easier to align the images and track disease progression.”
One downside of the new technology?
Getting a full scan of the eye took several minutes – a long time for people to sit still and not blink. Some young patients even needed to be sedated for the procedure to get high-quality images.
Zhou wanted to find a way to scan much faster to improve data quality, so he and his research team developed space-division multiplexing OCT. This new technique could take multiple highresolution images 10 times faster than traditional scanners.
“With this technology, we don’t have to worry about people moving their head or blinking,” he says. “Moreover, the current clinical OCT system is bulky and costly, so only major hospitals and clinics can afford it. We want to change that.”
Envisioning a solution
Zhou recently received an up to $20 million contract from the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) — the first of its kind awarded to WashU — to develop a portable OCT device that is low cost, easy to use, and more than 30 times faster than existing systems. Zhou and his team will use photonic integrated circuits and custom-designed electronic integrated circuits to create their new device.
One example is the computer chip. Over the years, the size of a computer chip has shrunk to only a few centimeters and contains billions of transistors. However, these chips use silicon wafers, which are difficult for OCT imaging light to travel through.
“We want to use integrated photonics, so we can do everything on the same chip – guide the light to where we want and process optical signals that can be used to generate the image,” Zhou says.
By using the semiconductor industry’s advancements in complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) processes to create the chip, the team can streamline manufacturing and lower costs. They anticipate that their new technology could also be applied to cardiology, dermatology, dentistry, endoscopy, gynecology and urology.
Zhou credits WashU’s collaborative environment with helping him bring his technology from the lab into clinics. “WashU encourages people to work together,” he says. “I’ve established close collaborations with colleagues in McKelvey Engineering and with world-class physicians at the School of Medicine. When creating biomedical devices, you don’t want them to stay in the lab – you want them to go into clinics to benefit patients. WashU allows me to do this.” M
We want to use integrated photonics, so we can do everything on the same chip – guide the light to where we want and process optical signals that can be used to generate the image.”
“ — CHAO ZHOU
WATCH: Get an inside look at Chao Zhou's lab.
Zhou's lab uses this model of a human eye in its research.
Zhou and his lab are working on space-division multiplexing OCT, which could take multiple high-resolution images of the eye 10 times faster than traditional scanners.
Community connection
Graduate students learn the art of science communication.
by Beth Miller
PHOTOS BY JERRY NAUNHEIM
McKelvey School of Engineering has long had collaborations with area schools to pique students’ interest in pursuing engineering. However, one lab in McKelvey Engineering has established a partnership with an area high school that not only provides education to its students but gives McKelvey Engineering graduate students the opportunity to share their research in a new way and to integrate into the St. Louis community.
Since 2021, graduate students in McKelvey School of Engineering’s biomedical research labs have been working with students in Pattonville High School’s Project Lead the Way Biomedical Sciences Program, a four-year program in which Pattonville students learn about medicine, physiology, genetics, microbiology, public health and forensic science.
The program is designed to introduce Pattonville’s students to biorelated fields, which dovetails with Spencer Lake’s Musculoskeletal Soft Tissue Laboratory, in which Lake, associate professor of mechanical engineering & materials science, and his team study the biomechanics of orthopedic soft tissues to understand properties of healthy, injured and diseased tissues.
The partnership was the brainchild of Ryan Castile, lab manager in Lake’s lab, a 2009 graduate of Pattonville High School and a resident of the St. Louis County district. Although the program didn’t exist when Castile was at Pattonville, he learned of it through connections with the district, got the partnership off the ground and keeps it running into its fourth year.
“I have enjoyed giving back to the community that I came from and still live in,” Castile said. “I’m trying to plant the seed in the students that there are cool things going on 15 minutes away from where you are. Giving the students opportunities I didn’t have is a good thing.”
“
St. Louis is a big community, but bringing them here and even running into them outside, it brings the WashU connection back to the front of their minds.”
— RYAN CASTILE
WATCH: Pattonville High School seniors in the Project Lead the Way Biomedical Sciences Program visit McKelvey Engineering.
When we go to Pattonville, we see freshmen through seniors. We make a connection there and open their eyes a little bit more. Each year they will see more demos, then the seniors get to come to WashU and visit a few research labs.”
— SPENCER LAKE
Each fall, seniors in the Pattonville program come to WashU to visit three biomedical labs and learn more about research and education opportunities in the McKelvey School of Engineering. Graduate students in Lake’s lab and others lead the students on the tours and demonstrate short experiments. In the spring, a larger group of graduate students from a variety of labs in McKelvey Engineering take hands-on, interactive demonstrations related to their ongoing research projects to Pattonville High School for a biomedical research showcase event designed for students in ninth-12th grades. The team wrote about the partnership in a paper published in the ASME Journal of Biomechanical Engineering last spring.
Rebecca Reals, a doctoral student in biomedical engineering in Lake’s lab, said she enjoys talking about her research and considers her participation in the program part of her work, not an extracurricular activity.
“It’s a different experience talking to high school students, and it really forces you to think about your research differently,” she said. “In some ways, it’s almost harder because we can’t use the words that we’re used to using every day. How do I take this complicated idea and distill it down to something that I can communicate to someone in high school in 10 minutes?”
For her demonstration, Reals, who studies joint contracture following elbow injury, worked with Castile to create a harness that limited movement of the elbow by using straps and rubber bands. The Pattonville students were asked to wear the harness while attempting to reach for a book on a high shelf or pick up a ball and quickly realized the impact of limited elbow movement.
“Because my work uses an animal model, I had to think deeply about how we could communicate the impact of elbow contracture to these students,”
Reals said. “We could see the light bulb go off in their heads when they realized how hard it would be to do things with this restricted motion.”
Shawn Pavey, also a doctoral student who studies orthopedic tissues in Lake’s lab, took cow and mouse tendons to the showcase.
“I wanted the students to see the difference in scale and how that affects things,” said Pavey, whose mother happens to be a Pattonville alumna. “There were students who told me that they had injured their Achilles tendon and were healing from that, and they liked knowing there were people trying to improve that healing process.”
Pavey said other students have asked for his advice about admission to WashU.
“They came back this year and said, ‘Thank you. I implemented your advice and got into WashU.’ That was really rewarding to see that impact,” Pavey said.
Jamie Jobe, a science teacher at Pattonville, took over the Project Lead the Way program there in 2017 and teaches the courses for ninth, 11th and 12th grades. Many Pattonville students who have completed the program, which has about 120 students total, have gone into nursing school and pre-med programs. Now, three students are doing their senior research projects in the labs of Lake and Matt Bersi, assistant professor of mechanical engineering & materials science, in McKelvey Engineering.
“This whole experience feels effortless, even though we put a lot of work into it,” Jobe said. “Our seniors have taken a lot of field trips in their lives, but every time I take them on the campus tour, they say it’s the most valuable field trip they’ve been on.”
Although the Pattonville students learn a little about building prosthetics and 3D printing in their curriculum,
the convergence of engineering with the biomedical field is often a new concept for them, Jobe said.
“The first group of seniors that I took to WashU got to see how studying tendons in Spence’s lab was applicable to medicine and that there was more to medicine than being in front of patients,” she said.
The unique aspect of the partnership is that it extends over multiple years and provides multiple opportunities for the two communities to interact.
“When we go to Pattonville, we see freshmen through seniors,” Lake said. “We make a connection there and open their eyes a little bit more. Each year they will see more demos, then the seniors get to come to WashU and visit a few research labs. I like how we’re setting this up with continuity and repeat interactions so there are more relationships established than a one-time walk-through of some labs. And if we can get more of a pipeline established like we’re hoping to, we can host more students to complete their senior projects.”
Castile said both he and Lake have run into the Pattonville students in the community, which has helped to further the connection.
“St. Louis is a big community, but bringing them here and even running into them outside, it brings the WashU connection back to the front of their minds,” Castile said. M
See the Last Word column on page 37 for more insight from Rebecca Reals.
Ushasi Pramanik, a research engineering technician in Jai Rudra’s lab, explains the lab’s research in vaccine development and regenerative immunology to the Project Lead the Way students.
Spencer Lake, associate professor of mechanical engineering & materials science, has worked with the Project Lead the Way program at Pattonville High School for four years.
Zoe Clapacs, a doctoral student in Jai Rudra's lab, explains her research on vaccine technology to the Project Lead the Way students.
Yin-Yuan Huang , a second-year mechanical engineering doctoral student in Srikanth Singamaneni’s lab, shows Project Lead the Way students how he makes gold nanospheres.
Metasebya Solomon
Biomedical engineering PhD alumna Metasebya Solomon attributes her success in biotechnology to many mentors throughout life.
by Kurt Greenbaum
PHOTO BY RANDY ANDERSON
Dinkenesh Boku couldn’t read, but she ran her own business selling honey wine in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa. At night, she’d coax her granddaughter to read aloud and quiz her with the kind of math problems she’d confront as a honey-wine merchant.
That influence, in part, is why the granddaughter, Metasebya Solomon, earned a doctorate in biomedical engineering from the McKelvey School of Engineering in 2012, co-founded a biotech company, helped create a patented therapy that could treat sickle cell disease and is nearing a patent on an Alzheimer’s disease treatment.
“She was always good in maths,” Solomon said. “You give her numbers, she would crank it out in seconds — and she made sure I learned. She felt having an education will free you, and the same with my mom. They both made sure they supported me.”
With her love of math sparked, along with a newfound love of biology, Solomon excelled through high school in Ethiopia. Joining her mother in Dallas, she became the first in her family to attend college — first at the local community college, then the University of Texas at Austin — earning a biomedical engineering degree.
A summer minority medical education program persuaded her that direct patient care wasn’t for her.
“I wanted to be behind the curtain,” she said. “I loved biology, and I could still implement biology to heal patients.”
That commitment led her to McKelvey’s biomedical engineering department. Solomon credits three faculty members for guiding her. Joseph Culver, the Sherwood Moore Professor of Radiology, was an adviser on her doctoral dissertation and helped focus her career path.
Another dissertation adviser, Samuel Achilefu, former director of the Washington University Molecular Imaging Center, now chairs the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center’s biomedical engineering department. He remains a collaborator on her work with the biotech firm she co-founded.
That firm, D-10 Therapeutics, received a patent in June 2022 for a monoclonal antibody therapy that shows promise in treating sickle cell disease, a painful blood disorder mainly affecting individuals of African, Mediterranean, Asian, Indian and Middle Eastern descent. The firm is working to apply with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for a clinical trial.
For her path into the business of biomedical engineering, she credits Frank Yin, emeritus professor and former chair of WashU’s biomedical engineering department, and his wife, Grace. They encouraged Solomon to apply for a Whitaker Fellowship in biomedical engineering. As a fellow, she returned to Ethiopia in 2013 intending to work in a public hospital, but soon recognized a greater need for education and training.
She taught master's students about biomedical design and imaging at Addis Ababa University and established a biomedical workshop to prepare the next generation of engineers. The experience solidified her passion to translate knowledge into tangible products, pursue opportunities in industry and, ultimately, co-found D-10 Therapeutics with Louis Jefferson. Her work, Solomon said, is a form of payback to her grandmother — to whom she dedicated her dissertation —and her mother, Bizunesh Bejiga. Neither lived long enough to see her career flourish: Her grandmother died in 2012, shortly before Solomon defended her dissertation, and her mother died in 2019.
“No matter how hard I try, I can never really repay my mom, grandmother, late father and Kassahun Maru, my stepfather, for what they have done for me,” Solomon said. “I'm going to pay it forward at some point.” M
No matter how hard I try, I can never really repay my mom, grandmother, late father and Kassahun Maru, my stepfather, for what they have done for me. I'm going to pay it forward at some point.” “
— METASEBYA SOLOMON
Leading innovation in offshore wind
Cristina Garcia-Duffy inspires her team to make futuristic wind farming a sustainable offshore reality.
by Shawn Ballard
Photo of the Kincardine Offshore Wind Farm project courtesy of Principal Power 2
For Cristina Garcia-Duffy, the difference between managing and leading is more than semantics. Garcia-Duffy, technical director and member of the executive team at the Offshore Renewable Energy (ORE) Catapult in the United Kingdom, leads the research and development of new innovations in offshore wind farm technologies, including next-generation turbines, electrical equipment, and digital and robotics applications for wind farm design, manufacturing, installation, operations and maintenance.
Broadly, Garcia-Duffy focuses on the processes required to take good ideas and turn them into new tools and technologies that improve the performance and reduce risk and cost of existing and future wind farms. At its core, though, her work is about enabling high-performing teams. And that starts with a firm grounding in the engineering fundamentals Garcia-Duffy learned as a student earning a doctorate in aerospace engineering at Washington University in St. Louis in 2008 and then honed through more than 15 years in research, technology, strategy and investment in aerospace products.
“I'm an advocate of not letting go of your technical expertise too soon in your career,” Garcia-Duffy said. “I'm now focused on creating the vision and nurturing teams to deliver, yet I still remain close to the details and interdependencies enough to make informed decisions on whether a technology is feasible and will bring sufficient benefit, how long it will take to develop, how costly it’s going to be, and where we might have pinch points.
“Without that engineering background, that technical understanding and expertise, I would be managing, not leading,” she said.
Curiosity takes flight
From an early age, Garcia-Duffy took joy in air travel, often flying from her home in Spain to visit her grandparents in Ireland.
“I have fond memories of my travels, at a time where flying was part of the holiday experience,” Garcia-Duffy said.
“Flying also sparked my interest and curiosity. I didn't know anything about physics, and I would itch to know how those machines were staying afloat in the air.”
Garcia-Duffy would learn the answers through her studies in aerospace engineering. Like many engineers, Garcia-Duffy delights in hands-on problem solving, preferring to “learn by doing, break a few things, fail fast, and then learn from that experience.”
That approach drew Garcia-Duffy to Missouri, where she worked with Swami Karunamoorthy at Saint Louis University as a master’s student and then to WashU, where she worked with David Peters, the McDonnell Douglas Professor of Engineering, as a doctoral student. Throughout her graduate studies, Garcia-Duffy put into practice what she’d learned, which at the time was focused on rotary wing (helicopter) aeromechanics.
She also connected with leading experts across aerospace and mechanical engineering who showed her the value of taking a “helicopter view” of engineering problems.
“When you're doing a PhD, usually you're very deep into your field, very narrow, very focused, so I was lucky to hear from more experienced researchers and experts in industry who made me look up and across,” Garcia-Duffy recalled. “They made me ask myself, ‘How can I apply what I'm doing to other things? How can other approaches be applied in many areas, not just in the narrow field you're studying?’”
“
Without that engineering background, that technical understanding and expertise, I would be managing, not leading.”
— CRISTINA GARCIA-DUFFY
LEARN MORE:
View an
animated guide to a floating offshore wind farm.
Every country in the world is restricted by limited coastal availability, so if you want to reach more sites in deeper water, sites that are windier because they’re farther away from shore, then you can no longer have a tower connecting your wind turbine to the seabed because it’s prohibitively expensive.”
— CRISTINA GARCIA-DUFFY
New frontiers for wind energy
Garcia-Duffy’s curiosity and adaptability serve her well as she and her team develop next-generation sustainable energy technologies, increasingly focusing on floating wind projects. With ORE Catapult, the U.K.’s leading innovation center for offshore renewable energy, established in 2013 by Innovate UK, the U.K. government’s innovation agency, Garcia-Duffy is addressing major roadblocks to wind energy generation: unlocking huge capacities at sea far away from shore, where the wind blows faster but the water depth is too large for fixed-bottom wind turbines.
Traditional offshore wind turbines have a fixed pylon anchored in the surface of the seabed a short distance from the coast, and where the ocean is relatively shallow. They’re connected to the onshore electrical grid via cables. While these offshore farms provide useful alternatives to onshore wind production, near-coastal real estate is limited and often in high demand.
“Every country in the world is restricted by limited coastal availability, so if you want to reach more sites in deeper water, sites that are windier because they’re farther away from shore, then you can no longer have a tower connecting your wind turbine to the seabed because it’s prohibitively expensive,” GarciaDuffy said. “That’s where you need floating wind. And that’s a completely different engineering concept.”
Floating wind farms, Garcia-Duffy says, are the next frontier of wind energy and will unlock sites all over the world, including a vast variety of coasts in the United States where the seafloor drops precipitously only a short distance offshore. Floating wind requires engineers to retool structures that were originally land-based and
static to accommodate dynamic motion, variable sea states and wind conditions while maintaining stability and functionality.
To do this, Garcia-Duffy and her colleagues at ORE Catapult are developing the technologies necessary to place thousands of wind turbines on floating complexes.
The helicopter view and having it all
Opening herself to different perspectives and adapting accordingly – adopting the helicopter view she learned in graduate school – is a cornerstone of Garcia-Duffy’s approach to life and career. As a leader, she maintains her connection with the technical details of her projects and encourages early career engineers to do the same. When she’s not solving complex engineering problems, Garcia-Duffy, who is married with two young children, likes to spend time with friends and family, is an avid reader and a cuisine enthusiast.
“When you have a career and you have aspirations, you're traveling a lot, you're supporting a sector that needs to move really fast, and then you have your family and a whole life at home, you need to be practical and organized,” Garcia-Duffy said. “You need to carefully compartmentalize your time. Then, you can have it all.” M
Career Highlights
Prior to joining ORE Catapult, Cristina Garcia-Duffy pushed the aerospace industry forward as the:
• Head of Technology –Strategy and Sustainability for the Aerospace Technology Institute, where she led the development and delivery of technology strategy for the entire air transport sector in the U.K.
• Technology Manager for Leonardo Helicopters, where she managed projects related to high-performance rotorcraft research and development
• Lead for Project Zero, where she and her partners delivered the world’s first electric autonomous tilt-rotor demonstrator aircraft in only 12 months
(From left) David Peters, the McDonnell Douglas Professor of Engineering, with Cristina Garcia-Duffy at her PhD hooding ceremony.
COURTESY PHOTO
11 new faculty join McKelvey Engineering
A Ilan Goodman, lecturer
MS, computer science, Stanford University, 2016
Ilan Goodman joined the Department of Computer Science & Engineering as a lecturer Sept. 1. Most recently, Goodman was a machine learning engineer at Meta Platforms Inc. He wrote a neural network to teach a computer to compose music and developed new techniques for understanding the strength of college football teams from the season’s competitive graph.
B Michael Hall, lecturer
PhD, computer engineering, Washington University in St. Louis, 2015
Michael Hall joined the departments of computer science & engineering and electrical & systems engineering as a lecturer Sept. 1. Most recently, Hall has been an adjunct instructor for CSE 132, Introduction to Computer Engineering, and CSE 560M in McKelvey Engineering. In addition, Hall had been a software engineer for OpenVault since 2021. Previously, Hall was a hardware engineer with VelociData.
C Hong Hu, assistant professor
PhD, engineering and applied sciences, Harvard University, 2021
Hong Hu joined the Preston M. Green Department of Electrical & Systems Engineering as an assistant professor in fall 2024. Hu was previously a postdoctoral researcher at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. Hu’s research interests lie in the field of signal processing, statistics and machine learning, with a particular focus on developing theoretical underpinnings for algorithms that process highdimensional data.
Hu also has an appointment in the Department of Statistics and Data Science in Arts & Sciences.
D Gregory Kehne, assistant professor
PhD, computer science, Harvard University, 2023
Gregory Kehne joined the Department of Computer Science & Engineering
Aug. 1 from the University of Texas at Austin, where he had been a postdoctoral researcher. He studies online and approximation algorithms, computational social choice, and algorithms for the study and improvement of collective decisionmaking. Previously, he was a doctoral student at Harvard University and at Carnegie Mellon University in the Department of Mathematical Sciences.
E Fanwei Kong, assistant professor
PhD, mechanical engineering, University of California, Berkeley, 2022
Fanwei Kong plans to join McKelvey Engineering in January 2025 from Stanford University, where she has been a postdoctoral scholar since 2022. Her research interests lie at the intersection of AI, medical computer vision and computational modeling of the heart. Her research has focused on developing machine learning and computational methods to create digital twins of patients’ hearts to enable personalized treatment planning, outcome predictions and early risk detection for cardiovascular diseases.
F Qinghua Liu, assistant professor
PhD, electrical and computer engineering, Princeton University, 2024
Qinghua Liu will join the Department of Computer Science & Engineering in 2025. He is a postdoctoral researcher at Microsoft Research in New York. Liu studies machine learning for decision-making. His past research encompasses a wide range of areas within reinforcement learning, including multi-agent reinforcement learning, partially observable reinforcement learning, and reinforcement learning with large state spaces. He is particularly interested in reinforcement learning from human feedback and the development of foundation models for decision-making.
G Afaque Manzoor, senior lecturer
PhD, mechatronics engineering, Jeju National University, 2021
Afaque Manzoor joined McKelvey Engineering as a senior lecturer in August 2024 from Sukkur IBA University in Pakistan, where he had been an assistant professor of electrical engineering since 2021. He headed the Advanced Micro Mechatronics and Energy Lab, where he used theoretical, numerical and experimental approaches to tackle challenges in emerging electronics, robotics, energy storage and harvesting, and health care. Manzoor’s research focuses on soft materials and soft robotics, flexible and wearable electronics, energy storage and harvesting, and 3D and 4D printing of multifunctional materials.
H Sara Roccabianca, associate professor
PhD, engineering, civil and mechanical structural systems, University of Trento, 2011
Sara Roccabianca joined McKelvey Engineering as an associate professor in August 2024 from Michigan State University, where she had been on the faculty since 2014.
Roccabianca’s research is in bladder and cardiovascular biomechanics, extracellular matrix remodeling, growth and remodeling, collagen and elastin, and constitutive modeling. She also has been involved in community outreach activities aimed to increase equity, diversity and inclusion in engineering, including activities to bring girls and young women into engineering.
I Janet Sorrells, assistant professor
PhD, bioengineering, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, 2024
Janet Sorrells joined the Preston M. Green Department of Electrical & Systems Engineering as an assistant professor in 2024. She earned a doctorate in bioengineering from the University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign. Her doctoral thesis focused on various hardware and software improvements for label-free nonlinear optical microscopy to enable faster and higher-throughput imaging. Part of the work has been developing the SPEED (Single- and multi-photon PEak Event Detection) algorithm to enable the fastest-ever single-detector photon counting in fluorescence lifetime imaging microscopy.
J Francisco Lagunas Vargas, assistant professor
PhD, physics, University of Illinois at Chicago, 2023
Francisco Lagunas Vargas will join the McKelvey School of Engineering as an assistant professor in June 2025 from Argonne National Laboratory, where he is a postdoctoral appointee. At Argonne, he conducts research on renewable energy materials and nextgeneration ionic sensors. His expertise lies in utilizing advanced Scanning Transmission Electron Microscopes (STEM) to investigate materials at angstrom scales.
K Gang Wu, professor
PhD, Harbin Institute of Technology, 2004
Gang Wu has joined the Department of Energy, Environmental & Chemical Engineering as a professor from The State University of New York at Buffalo, where he had been on the faculty since 2014. An electrochemist, Wu explores platinum group metal (PGM)-free and low-PGM catalysts for sustainable hydrogen technologies, such as fuel cells, water electrolysis, carbon dioxide conversion and clean electrosynthesis. In 2011, he published his pioneering work in Science and demonstrated the feasibility of using PGM-free catalysts to replace platinum for fuel cell technologies. After that, as the principal investigator, he further expanded the concept of a series of fuel cell catalysts based on atomically dispersed metal sites.
Hong Chen, NIH Director’s Pioneer Award recipient
Hong Chen has received a National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director’s Pioneer Award to use ultrasound to induce a hibernationlike state in mammals — something that was previously considered to be science fiction.
The five-year, $5.4 million award is one of eight awarded following a highly competitive application and interview by peer scientistresearchers nationwide. The award supports innovative researchers who propose bold research projects with unusually broad scientific impact.
Chen, associate professor of biomedical engineering in the McKelvey School of Engineering and of neurosurgery in the School of Medicine, and a multidisciplinary team induced a hibernationlike state in mice by using ultrasound to stimulate the area in the brain that helps to regulate body temperature and metabolism. Their findings showed the first noninvasive and safe method to induce a hibernationlike state by targeting the central nervous system.
‘A wonderful ride’
James Ballard retires after 54 years at WashU.
by Beth Miller
ames Ballard, a senior lecturer and former director of the Engineering Communication Center in the McKelvey School of Engineering, retired June 1, 2024, after teaching technical writing to thousands of engineering students over 54 years with the university.
Ballard began his WashU career in 1970 as a doctoral student in the Department of English in Arts & Sciences, then joined the Engineering school in 1974 after a conversation with James M. McKelvey Sr., who was dean from 1964-1991. The Engineering school was looking for someone to teach its students writing. Ballard designed a syllabus for an undergraduate course in technical writing — a fairly new term at the time — and got a trial semester.
“I put on a necktie, walked across a quadrangle, and my salary escalated dramatically,” he recalls with his signature dry wit. “Life got much more interesting. I realized how much I’d missed technology and science, and I got to hang around it without doing the math.”
The trial technical writing course, which is still taught today through the Division of Engineering Education, has helped students think more analytically and write more clearly. Ballard also created and taught the Engineering Practice and Professional Values course, a precursor to Engineering Ethics and Sustainability, and developed a graduate course in
Engineering Communications. Students not only learned to improve their writing, but also learned to give more effective presentations by practicing on video. In all, he taught more than 45 uninterrupted years.
“When teaching tech writing, I’m applying the close reading one does with poetry or a novel,” he said. “You shift your attention into first gear and proceed slowly. One student commented at the semester’s end that they were much more confident about their writing skills, but, ruefully, they had to think about every sentence now. Seemed like a fair price to me.”
Others recall Ballard’s enthusiasm, as well.
“Jim Ballard’s wisdom, wit and kindness have shaped the Engineering Communication Center into a unique and collaborative teaching environment, and he will be dearly missed,” said Jay Turner, the James McKelvey Professor of Engineering Education, head of the Division of Engineering Education and vice dean for education. “His helpful coaching, careful reading, and editing skills are unmatched.”
Prior to joining WashU, Ballard taught English to students majoring in physics at Middle East Technical University in Turkey, where he and his wife served in the Peace Corps for two years.
While teaching, he founded the original Technical Writing Center in 1994, now known as the Engineering Communication Center (ECC). In the last decade of his tenure, Ballard provided writing consultations and assisted students and faculty with publications and grant applications.
In Ballard’s honor, the ECC created The James C. Ballard Excellence in Technical Communication Award, which will be the top prize in the annual technical writing competition. This honor will include a cash prize and will be presented at the undergraduate student awards ceremony every spring.
In his retirement, Ballard plans to continue consulting work.
“Many of the doctoral students I worked with at WashU are now engineering faculty elsewhere, with their own research groups,” he said.
“It’s been a wonderful ride, kind of a dream,” Ballard said. M
by Rebecca Reals
Communication
Doctoral students, especially those in a field as complex and jargon-filled as engineering, are often told that they don’t fully understand a concept until they can explain it to their family. But what if, instead of your cousin or grandparent, you had to explain it to your 17-yearold neighbor?
Every year, graduate students in the Lake Lab and others do exactly that. Through a partnership with Pattonville High School’s Project Lead the Way Biomedical Sciences Program, they share their research with high school students through interactive demos to introduce them to potential career paths in engineering.
But the program benefits the graduate students just as much. Describing your work to a teenager who has never done experiments like “flow cytometry” or “histological staining” and doesn’t understand terms like “myofibroblast proliferation” or “arthrogenic contracture” requires you to be more creative with your word choice. It also forces you to
reconsider any assumptions you may take for granted. You designed your experiment this way because that’s how your lab has always done it. You use this method because that’s what everyone in the field uses. Even if you have accepted these assumptions as facts, a high school student might not, prompting you to explain the reasoning behind them.
Communicating results is an essential part of a doctoral candidate’s education and is typically accomplished by delivering talks at lab meetings, presenting posters at conferences and writing papers to be published. But these communications often stay within the same field and rarely leave academia. Pushing beyond this boundary to share your work with people outside of a university setting not only benefits the high school students and graduate students, but also has the potential to affect broader communities by influencing public policy, increasing trust in science and inspiring the next generation of engineers. M
Describing your work to a teenager who has never done experiments like ‘flow cytometry’ or ‘histological staining’ and doesn’t understand terms like ‘myofibroblast proliferation’ or ‘arthrogenic contracture’ requires you to be more creative with your word choice.”